Adm Trial Question: `Fixer' Or A `fighter'?

July 17, 1998|By Greg Burns, Tribune Staff Writer.

The price-fixing trial of top executives at Archer Daniels Midland Co. focused Thursday on Terrance Wilson, the tough-talking corn-processing boss who is accused of being the agribusiness giant's expert fixer.

Federal prosecutors in the landmark case called their first witness, a Japanese national from an ADM competitor, who told jurors that Wilson pushed aggressively for price-fixing deals. During meetings that included ADM executives and officials from other companies, Kanji Mimoto said, "We agreed on the sales price and also we agreed on the sales quantity."

ADM executives Wilson, Michael Andreas and Mark Whitacre, who was also an FBI mole, are charged with violating federal antitrust law in connection with the $600 million market for lysine, an amino acid fed to chicken and pigs.

The Japanese executive for Ajinomoto Co., who is now based in Indonesia, described arrangements for a meeting in Paris during which he said lysine producers distributed a fake agenda with discussion points such as "animal rights." In fact, Mimoto said, the agenda was intended to cover up the price-fixing discussion that was the real purpose of the meeting, which both Whitacre and Wilson attended.

But earlier in the day, Wilson's attorney had told jurors that his client was only bluffing. "He's a fighter, not a fixer," Reid Weingarten declared Thursday morning.

Wilson joined in price-fixing meetings with his Asian lysine competitors, Weingarten conceded. But Wilson was only trying to con them into thinking ADM would go along with their scheme, Weingarten said.

"They were lying to each other. There was bluffing," he said during opening statements. "The philosophy here is to hold your competitor's hand so you don't get stabbed in the back."

Wilson never intended to abide by any of the agreements he pretended to make, Weingarten said.

Later Thursday, federal prosecutors played the first of many private business discussions secretly taped by Whitacre at the FBI's behest.

Jurors donned wireless headsets to hear a phone conversation between Whitacre and Mimoto, the middle manager at lysine rival Ajinomoto Co. who testified Thursday. On the tape, the pair amicably hash out what Mimoto described as an illicit deal, agreeing to raise lysine prices in several big markets worldwide.

But Mimoto balks when Whitacre suggests the competing lysine producers schedule a joint meeting in Hawaii, their first on U.S. soil after previous get-togethers overseas.

"United States is, ah, very severe in control of antitrust activity," Mimoto tells Whitacre on the tape.

Under questioning Thursday by U.S. Attorney Scott Lassar, who is prosecuting the high-profile case personally, Mimoto explained, "As much as possible, we wanted to avoid the U.S. as a meeting site."

Mimoto and his company have pleaded guilty to price-fixing charges and agreed to cooperate with the government.

In other testimony, Mimoto said he had no doubt ADM was trying to make a deal that would divvy up sales volume among producers and raise the price of lysine. Negotiating on behalf of the Decatur-based public company, Wilson tried to drive a hard bargain, demanding the same sales volume as market-leader Ajinomoto, Mimoto said.

Attorneys for Andreas and Wilson have said the government relied too heavily on Whitacre, who is serving a nine-year prison sentence for embezzling millions of dollars from ADM during the course of the investigation.

In his opening statement, Weingarten called Whitacre "the director, the producer and the choreographer of this drama. The FBI in this case were nothing more than cheerleaders for Whitacre."

Contrary to the government's charges, he told jurors, ADM boosted competition in the lysine market by busting up the Asian cartel that controlled it.

ADM pleaded guilty in the anti-trust investigation two years ago and paid a then-record $100 million fine. It has paid tens of millions more to settle civil charges related to the probe.

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